


Immortals

by Joanne_Barcia



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: AU Season 10, Gen, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-07 21:58:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3184664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joanne_Barcia/pseuds/Joanne_Barcia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is woken in the early hours of the morning by a frantic voice on the other end of the phone, going on about some man in a nearby hospital. "His records say he died several months ago," she says. "This shouldn't be happening."<br/>/<br/>Or: He can come up with no conclusion that makes sense, but that's alright. The truth doesn't make much sense, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Daylight

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on FF.net. This one's kinda slow to update. Maaan, I got so many open stories... why did I do this to myself?
> 
> Well, reviews would be lovely. I've not written in this genre before, so I'd love some feedback.

* * *

"'Cause we could be immortals, immortals  
Just not for long, for long  
If we meet forever now, pull the blackout curtains down  
Just not for long, for long"

\- _Immortals // Fall Out Boy_  


* * *

The city has been dark for hours by the time Seeley Booth gets the call. A freak storm in the middle of February, rainy and cold, left homes lit only by the weak flickering of candles and dimming flashlights, streets pitch dark and silent. A sheet, as it seemed, had just come down over DC and left its people blind, lazily stumbling about in the night, asleep at dawn. It's then when the agent's phone rings, when the first thin spots of sunlight start brushing against his window.

He is certainly no stranger to wakeup calls at the break of daylight. So, tearing himself away from the warmth of his bedcovers, he sets himself upright and answers, his mind strolling along in his first moments of wakefulness. Another body, probably. It's always another body.

Instead of some other officer on the other end of the line, however, it's a stranger. It's this low, hushed voice, asking if this is Special Agent Seeley Booth she's speaking to. And if his badge and driver's license are at all in sync, the answer is an undoubted _yes_. He tells her as much. She goes right on.

"Agent Booth, I have to ask you to come down to United Medical Center as soon as you can."

Now something like that – that wakes him up.

He pushes himself off the bed with enough force to startle his wife awake, and he's halfway to the bathroom by the time he forces, "Why, is there an emergency? What's wrong?" out of his mouth. He starts using his shoulder to hold his phone up as his hands start moving at ungodly speeds, accelerating his morning routine to a new level of rushed activity.

"I would prefer to speak with you in person, sir, but to be honest, I'm just not quite sure what's –"

The drawers beneath the bathroom sink slam closed as Booth runs a wet hand over his face and says clearly into the phone, "I _am_ coming, alright? I'm coming. I just want to know what's going on, so if you could just give me an _idea_ –"

"Sir, I don't _know_ what's going on," her voice is an eerie hiss, the slightest hint of fear crackling through the line. "But a man was admitted about an hour ago and is under observation, and you were the primary contact. But this shouldn't be happening, and I don't understand what's going on, but sir, you need to come right away."

"I am," he repeats, glancing over to see Bones, clumsily dressed and now wide-awake. She leaves the room, and he just barely hears the light jingle of car keys in her hand as she goes to wake Christine. They're rising with the sun outside, each one of them – up before the air loses its bite. "I am coming, do you hear me? I'm leaving my house now. So if you could stop being so goddamn cryptic, I'd really appreciate it."

"I'm so, so sorry, sir, but I can't. I can't, I can't – you really need to be here."

The line goes dead, and all Booth can bring himself to do after that is stumble out to the car, where Brennan is strapping Christine into her car seat, and get behind the wheel. As soon as they're set, he drives – and although dropping Christine off with Max takes an infuriatingly long time, it gives him time to think and mentally prepare for whatever this new crisis may be.

Jared must've gotten into some trouble. Or maybe Pops, maybe he took a fall – or what about Hodgins? If the entomologist were at all hurt, though, Angela would be the first person to call. But who knows?

Parker, he's with Rebecca, safe and sound to the best of his knowledge. And even if James Aubrey was in any trouble, Booth's name should not be anywhere near his emergency contact list.

He runs through his mental list of friends and family more times than he can count, and comes up with no conclusion. No conclusion that makes sense, anyway. But that's quite alright; the truth doesn't make much sense, either.

* * *

The sun has just barely risen by the time Booth pulls into the hospital, swinging into a parking spot with probably more speed than necessary. He climbs out of his SUV and just barely waits for Brennan to follow before he locks it, and they're inside the building before the fog of their breath can float away.

They're not alone in the lobby. There are a few people mulling about, waiting for something, but they're essentially being ignored. At least, that's what Booth is led to believe when someone rushes to meet him the second he speaks his name aloud.

The receptionist's hand moves to a pager, and within seconds, a woman who sounds strikingly similar to his wakeup caller appears from some obscure room, rushing to meet him with disheveled hair and wide eyes. She leads him down a maze of hallways, all but dragging him and Brennan in her wake as she speaks, words falling out and crashing together as she goes.

"Agent Booth, my name's Dr. Carter. Like I said on the phone, there was a man brought in a few hours ago, covered in blood, not saying a word. It looked like a mugging or some other attack, but we weren't sure. We cleaned him up and had the blood tested, and the blood matched his own – that wasn't surprising. But sir, once all the blood was off, we tried to find where it came from, and there were no cuts, no bruises, no anything. There was _nothing_ there."

The detective in him rises and starts to speak before being cut off.

"But sir, that wasn't what made me call you specifically. Up until a while ago, he was a John Doe, see? No wallet or anything on him, and like I said, he wasn't saying a word. But we tried running his DNA through a database – maybe he'd been here before, right? Well, we got something back, but… Agent Booth, we got back the name of someone whose records say that he died several months ago."

The three of them slow to a stop just outside an observation window with a dark curtain drawn over it. Booth and Brennan, they can only stare at this doctor and wonder what kind of conspiracy they're being dragged into before Booth finally speaks up, his voice firm and hard.

"Doctor, I still haven't heard a name."

There is a deep, shuddering breath from a nervous doctor as she draws the curtain away.

And Booth, he's suddenly not sure whether he wants to yell at the woman or just turn around and walk out – because there is no way in this moment that he is not being played.

The words come out in a whisper, quiet enough to barely be heard. But, of course – Booth and Brennan have nothing if not keen senses. They stare as the words come and go.

"The man's name is Lance Sweets."


	2. Idiosyncracies

If there is any emotion trapped inside the clone being examined in that observation room, it's impossible to tell. Sitting upright on a hospital bed, being poked and prodded and examined by nearly every doctor and nurse on the floor, he's silent as ever, his face impossibly blank. The only thing to suggest that he is even remotely human is the occasional tilt of his head, a slight bite of his lip, a blink or two - and even those are difficult to see; at least they are to the hospital staff.

They're fairly easy for Seeley Booth to pick up, though, for reason other than his attention to detail and years of interrogating. From years of knowing the man whose spitting image sits on the other side of the glass, he knows just about every mannerism in the shrink's book. Every little idiosyncrasy that made the guy _Sweets_ is tucked away in Booth's head, filed somewhere deep and - as of late - seldom visited. His mental image of Sweets hadn't been touched for months. That was because Sweets had been dead, cremated and irrevocably gone for months. He _still is._

"That," he breathes, turned slightly towards his wife. Brennan does not remove her eyes from the man in the other room, but simply leans her head over to hear. "That is not Sweets."

There's something dark in the woman's eyes, a kind of steely focus. She picks her head back up, so she's standing perfectly straight and tall, and calmly answers, "Of course it's not Sweets. Sweets is dead, and his ashes were scattered. It is not possible."

And that is that. Their conversation turns back into silence, allowing them to just barely hear Dr. Carter's muffled voice from the other side of the door. They see pictures of perfect strangers smiling out from a phone in her hand.

"Sir, do you recognize any of the people in this picture? Anyone at all?"

No. There's a shake of the head, slow and careful in a very _Sweets_ way. The guy's eyebrows are pulled together, knitted in thought as they always were when the young psychologist spent hours hunched over his desk, picking apart cases and putting pieces together. To see that expression emulated so closely is almost unsettling, to say the very least. Regardless, the man inside doesn't recognize the old woman with the crescent glasses or the child in the _Iron Man_ tee shirt or the blonde with a baby on her hip in the doctor's photos. And he shouldn't.

The doctor's phone goes back into her pocket, and in one fluid movement of her arm, she gestures without warning for Booth and Brennan to enter the room. They do so slowly, almost robotically.

"Alright, now I want you to turn your head around," she says to the man. "Do you recognize these two people?"

Obedient as ever, he turns to look as Brennan steps into view first, and then Booth. His eyes widen considerably - the first real proof of human emotion to be seen all morning - and he just stares. There's something completely unreadable in his expression, floating somewhere between fear and relief, despair and joy. It's something brand new on a familiar face.

The staring match lasts for years and years, only to finally be broken by Carter's soft interruption, a quiet repetition of her question.

"Sir? Do you recognize them?"

Yes. His eyes stay locked on the pair as he nods. Of course he recognizes them; alive or dead, cloned or copied or imaginary, Lance Sweets always would. Which begs the question – which of those is he?

Dead. _Sweets is dead._ They _watched_ the life leave his eyes on that September night, sat helplessly on the concrete floor next to smeared puddles of his blood as officials took him away. They watched him get wheeled into the lab like he was a package, and they opened him like one. They zipped him out of his body bag and found him blindly staring out at them, his lips and skin already growing blue. Cam, she performed the autopsy. Brennan and Daisy, they analyzed his bones. His _bones._

Once a person's been on the slab, they don't come back. Yet here he is.

Supposedly.

The DNA, having been run several more times over the past hour, matches up. His face is a perfect copy of the one in Booth's phone, smiling as he held Christine on one early morning last year. The look in the guy's eyes, it absolutely screams that this is the same person. Regardless –

"You're not Sweets," the words leave Booth's mouth before he even conceives them. "Lance Sweets was murdered on September 25th, 2014. Months ago. I don't know who you are or how you're connected to him, but you're _not_ Sweets."

Brennan says nothing at first.

A brief flash of hurt flickers in the man's eyes for one solitary moment before disappearing. Slowly, and without reply, he drops his head to stare at the floor, as if the linoleum has the answers hidden in its cracks.

"Doctor, have there been x-rays taken yet?" Brennan finally asks, her first words since entering the room. Her eyes are shining and her hands are balled at her sides; but her voice is perfectly calm. Purely analytical, as close to objective as she can possibly get.

There's a shake of Carter's head. "No, but we can have it done."

After paging a technician to set up the procedure, she glances back down at the man sitting in front of them.

"Mr. Sweets –" Booth very nearly grimaces at that. "We're going to take you to another room, alright? Just for an x-ray, and then we'll come back here. How does that sound?"

This copy of Sweets raises his head to meet the doctor's eyes and lazily nods, as if accepting coffee on a tired Monday morning. Not that Booth could make a cup as good as Sweets did – but that hardly matters. It will never happen again, anyway. The coffee, that is – because the shrink is dead. That Sweets-specific nod, on the other hand, is happening right in front of him.

"Sir, can you speak?"

And he shakes his head.

"Why not?"

And his hand comes up to his neck slowly, softly rubbing the skin there. There are no marks there, no bruises or cuts. So Carter grabs the nearest light and gently commands him to open his mouth. After a few silent moments of examining him, she emerges and pages the technician once more.

"I want to order an MRI in addition to the x-ray. Can we do that…? Yes, the x-ray first. Thanks," she speaks clearly and quickly into her device before replacing it into her pocket and turning back to this pseudo-Sweets. "Alright. Come on, let's get you looked at."

And the man, he plants both feet on the ground and pushes himself off of the bed – only for his legs to start to crumple underneath him.

And as fate would have it, Booth is somehow standing close enough to Sweets to actually catch the shrink when he reaches out instinctively. As soon as the guy's steadied enough and shuffling along, though, on his shaking legs, Booth releases his hold and tries desperately to ignore how it felt to touch Sweets, whose blood was, in fact, flowing just beneath the living skin. His heartbeat, having faintly thrummed against Booth's fingers after so long, was a difficult thing to forget; especially after feeling it stop completely, all those months ago.

Life, as it seems, is a good color on Lance Sweets.

Whether he truly is alive or not.


	3. Similarities

"How strange…" Carter's voice is barely audible, the thought having been spoken mainly to herself. Her eyes are firmly fixed on the laminates in her hand for a few seconds before glancing over at a data printout in her hand and back again. "It's like…" She starts but pauses, unsure of how to finish.

"It's as if… Imagine a person being put together again. And his voice is late, it's the last thing to come back…."

That earns her a blank stare from Booth, and a confused, yet firm, statement from Brennan: "That makes absolutely no sense, Dr. Carter." She leaves it at that. Carter agrees.

"You're absolutely right, Dr. Brennan, it doesn't make any sense. None at all. Zip," her answer is sharp. Brennan is trying her patience, as she does with many others; but Carter's a _physician_ , damn it. That's what she _is_. What she _isn't_ is a physicist, a neuroscientist, a philosopher, or some omnipotent genius. She studies the human body, just that, and the body in the other room – no matter what the records or these people say – is the living, breathing Lance Sweets.

"I'm not sure that you realize, but this is my first case of a patient returning from the dead. It's not _going_ to make sense, and the sooner you wrap your mind around that, the better."

The silence in the room that follows is suddenly as thick as the tension. Brennan looks away, and Carter holds the documents in her hands up for the two to see. The anthropologist turns her head back to look at the last second.

Sure enough, there are three images of the inside of Sweets' (and the name still feels wrong in their minds, somehow, misplaced and distant) throat, each looking to be exact copies of one another. But according to the printout that accompanies the scans, that's not quite true.

"These scans were taken within minutes of each other. And each one shows minute development of the vocal folds, if that makes sense. It's like his vocal chords had disappeared and are now growing back."

A pause.

"So… he'll be able to talk eventually?" Booth asks, eyebrows knitting in gentle confusion. Carter responds with a tentative nod.

"That's what it looks like, yeah."

He nods and glances out towards the hallway. The man in question is in the next room over, probably waiting impatiently, if he's anything at all like Sweets. Or at least anything like how Sweets _was_. If there's any likeness, the man sitting in the other room should be tapping the ball of his bare foot on the floor in perfect rhythm, drumming his fingers ceaselessly on whatever surface he can find, trying desperately to wrap his mind around what's happening just like the rest of them are doing. Perhaps he's had better luck.

Booth spins around on his heels and walks into the hallway without a word. Brennan and Carter, like he hoped, are following him out and into the other room, asking the whole two-step walk what he's doing. He ducks back into Sweets' temporary room before looking back at Carter.

"He can still write, right?"

The physician waits in the doorway as Booth reaches for a nearby clipboard and plucks a piece of paper from it. He folds it, grabs a pen, and deposits all three objects right on Sweets' lap. The would-be psychologist stares at him and Brennan, who carefully positions herself by Booth's side, with wide, startled eyes.

"Take that pen, and I want you to answer me," Booth says firmly, jabbing his finger toward the paper. "What's your name?"

And the man looks impossibly young in that moment, all wide eyes and wordlessly begging for trust. He bobs his head and complies, and in the same handwriting that always graced legal documents and profile reports months ago, he shakily writes.

_Lance Sweets_

Booth stares at the long S's, catalogues every loop of every letter, notes how the two names look so squished together, as they always did when the shrink was alive and breathing. It's as if he's signing some legal document for him and nothing more.

Booth takes a shaky breath.

"What is my daughter's name?"

Sweets does not hesitate.

_Christine Angela Booth_

The questions keep going, and the answers keep coming back in those incredible, familiar letters.

"When you took your gun certification test, who was the examiner?"

_You_

"Who's the woman standing next to me?"

_Dr. Temperance Brennan_

His pen pauses for a brief moment on the page before he adds to that.

_(Bones)_

"Who was your girlfriend?"

_Daisy Wick_

"What was the last case we worked on together?"

_Fbi conspiracy_

Booth pauses, stares at those letters and then back at Sweets, who's waiting expectantly for the next question. Slowly, the agent forces the next few words through his teeth.

"How did you die?"

The tip of the pen sits precariously on the page, and a spot of ink grows beneath it in the moments of silence that follow. Sweets glances up at Booth's face, and in that one instant, the older man decides he doesn't want to see the answer on paper. The way the shrink's looking at him now, the expression that seems to clearly ask if he's sure, they almost make him take the question back. But Sweets drops his head again and hesitantly pulls the pen across the page before Booth can say a word. The letters on the page are the worst ones he's ever read.

_Beaten in a parking lot - Bled out?_

And if that last part was a question, neither Booth nor Brennan can bring themselves to answer it. Instead, they glance back to Carter and lock onto her curious eyes. Even from her spot in the doorway, she doesn't need to ask aloud if the answers were right. All she really needs is the dark look in Sweets' eyes when he glances her way to tell her that.

* * *

They get the x-rays back within ten minutes, and they land right in Brennan's hands.

"They're the same bones, Booth... the same ones..."

She almost sounds surprised – but not quite.

* * *

The scars are still there. Every single one, in the exact same pattern. No one is sure what to make of this.

* * *

Hours after they first arrived, there's nothing left for the hospital to do. They find Sweets' old clothes from when he was brought in, somehow clean of blood and dirt and free of tears, and within minutes he is dressed and standing idle just outside the room's door. Carter pulls Booth aside just before they leave.

"I'm not sure if it's possible for me to ask around to see if any other doctors have experienced anything similar," she says. "At least not without being called a loon. But I'll try. I'll give you a call if I find anything that might explain this."

And he nods, shakes her hand, and they part.

The walk out to Booth's car is a long, silent one. Not to mention miserably cold, with snow being blown every which way by bitter February wind. The SUV is something of a haven, and they pile inside. Sweets does not hesitate to take his usual seat behind Brennan.

_Where to, the victim's family? See if she knew anyone who had motive to kill her?_

_The Jeffersonian, see if they found anything new at the lab?_

_Back to the FBI building to finish up the case?_

But there is no case. This is not one of those familiar days, and as Booth turns the key in the ignition, feels the engine roar to life, he finds he has absolutely no idea where to drive.

Where does a person go, he wonders, after the reanimation of a long dead best friend?

He is saved from having to find the answer by Brennan's cell phone ringing.

The anthropologist picks up without pause to find news of a new set of remains waiting at the lab. She is, perhaps, marginally less excited than she usually is. And with a strange tone in her voice, she asks the woman on the other end, "May I ask which intern is scheduled for this rotation?"

It's Wendell Bray, but why is she asking?

She simply nods, though Cam can't see it through the phone, and dismisses the question. She glances at Booth, then back at Sweets, and says she'll be there. She may be longer than usual, but she will. She says as much and hangs up.

And Booth swings out of his parking space, turns the wheel, and is off.

They'll be making something of a pit stop, though, before they can finally get to work.

%MCEPASTEBIN%


	4. Vantage Point

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo! I'm kinda proud of myself on this one. The chapter's kinda spotty in quality at first, I think, but it gets better toward the end. I pumped this out in a couple hours, in one shot. So I hope you like it! Let me know what you think. :)

They pull up the driveway slowly, as if they need the few extra seconds to prepare for what they're about to do. Booth certainly seems to need them; tapping his fingers on the steering wheel at an imperfect tempo, glancing back at Sweets in the rearview mirror periodically, he is the very antithesis of his usual self. His typical calmness is nowhere to be found.

Perhaps they should have called first. But what could they have said?

Bones probably could have thought of something, in retrospect. While not the most personable, she always has her knack for rationalizing things, and this is something that is just sitting and begging to be rationalized.

But Brennan, too, has been quiet for the entire ride. Not a logical word to be found.

There is nothing about this that makes sense. Nothing at all. So for the millionth time that morning, Booth digs his nails into the side of his leg as hard as he can, and he's still saddled with the same fact. This is real. This is real. This is real.

They get out of the car slowly, Sweets the slowest of them. As they walk toward the door, still taking their sweet time, his head is tilted up, and he just gazes around him in what could only be awe. This house, the surrounding trees, the sky above it, they're all perfect. Grandiose, in all their simple, ordinary wonder.

He follows Booth and Brennan up the porch steps, not bothering to glance down at where he's walking. His feet know the path already, better than anything.

Booth knocks on the door, and somewhere behind it, they hear a baby crying. This drags Sweets' attention from everything else.

They wait. All of thirty seconds goes by with the dread of anticipation settling in each of their chests before the baby's crying gradually goes silent and the door opens. A woman stares out.

Daisy Wick blinks at the people before her, turns it over in her mind – and slams the door shut.

As if on cue, the baby's crying starts up once more.

Perhaps they really should have called first.

* * *

The air outside is freezing and dry and miserable, and standing out on the porch in front of the closed door seems unbearable. But perhaps that misery is not just from the cold.

Brennan knows the look she saw on Daisy's face. That look of disbelief, then errant hope – and, finally, rejection. As if this could never possibly be the truth, so therefore, it is not. Better to keep it completely out of mind, pretend the door never opened, than risk the fall.

She thinks of Booth, and the discovery that he never died years before. Perhaps that was the expression she wore way back then; but she could never tell.

She doesn't quite think it through – a first for her – as she reaches for the door knob and lets herself into her intern's home, leaving Booth and Sweets to wait where they stand.

* * *

Booth, on the other hand – knows very well the expression on Sweets' face. That of longing, pure love and simultaneous heartbreak. He thinks of Bones. He thinks back five years – was it really that long ago? – to kissing her, feeling her so close, and just feeling that sensation. Loving her wholly, completely. And then pulling back. Hearing her say _no_ , hearing her say that they could never work.

He took it in stride. Almost.

And then he blinks, and he's back on Daisy's porch, listening to tentative steps coming their way.

Life's a perfect mirror sometimes. And from the vantage point, it's so very clear to see.

He allows himself a smile, in spite of himself.

* * *

The door opens once more to Daisy Wick's curious, distant face. Warily, she whispers.

"It's cold outside. Come… come inside…."

She nods and steps aside.

* * *

They stand just behind the door. Just the two of them, once Booth goes off to find his wife and leaves them alone.

And Sweets stares at her for the longest time. He's home, well and truly _home_ , and staring his love in the face; and he thinks that even if he could speak, the swell of emotion in his chest would render him speechless anyway. Because _God_ – she's beautiful. Even disheveled and scared as she seems, she's the most wonderful thing he's seen since his first glimpse of new life.

And her voice, incredible and damn near musical, is the most wonderful thing he's heard. When she speaks, she has his full attention.

"Dr. Brennan tells me…" she averts her eyes for the briefest moment, swallows, takes a deep, careful breath. "She says you're back from the dead. She said that… that they just… found you alive. Somehow."

He can only nod. Because he's just as clueless as she is, but he's come to tentatively accept the situation. It's almost too good to be true, but here he is. Here they are.

She brings her hands to his face, warm and gentle on his cheeks. There's the slightest tremor as she runs her thumbs across his skin, feels his heart beating so rhythmically. And she uses her thumbs to brush away the tiny tears he never noticed on his cheeks. Gently, he brings one hand to her face to do the same.

"I…." her breaths are shuddering in her chest, because by all accounts, she must be dreaming. This defies every fact, every bit of logic and reason she knew so well. But perhaps the world is not all science and reason; perhaps dreams can come true. Even illogical, impossible dreams.

"I saw your bones. I analyzed them. With Dr. Brennan. You were on the slab, you…."

She shakes her head and shuts her eyes, as if to will away the memories. But those memories were real. They were terrible, nightmarish memories, but they were; and now they don't matter. They mean absolutely nothing now, because Lance Sweets is standing in front of her, in the flesh, and she feels him living and breathing underneath her fingertips. Sweets' bones on the slab were memories, but this?

This is real.

"You were beaten to death," she says with difficulty. But a tiny, beautiful smile spreads across her face. "But here you are."

Gently, carefully – she pulls his face close. Their lips meet, and she just throws her arms around his neck and he hugs her around the waist. He's alive, truly and irrevocably so; but this right here is the real Heaven.

Here he is. And here they are.

* * *

A throat clears somewhere behind them, and a baby is crying still. They pull apart, hesitantly, as if once they do, they would cease to be. But that's not the case. It's far from the case.

They turn to Booth, smiling, and Brennan, who's got the most beautiful child in that moment on Earth in her arms. He's absolutely wailing, in spite of his godmother's gentle rocking and soft lips on his forehead. But even so, Sweets looks his way and feels his own legs shaking because _God –_ here he is.

Seeley Lance Sweets-Wick was born on a late November evening, and the child's father was so noticeably absent. Yet, adversely – the two-month old is present for his father's rebirth. And perhaps, if people could be poetry, they would find themselves among the classics. Beautiful, poignant, and filled to the brim with overwhelming love as Brennan steps over and gently places the infant in his father's waiting arms.

And just like that – the little boy's crying stops. And with his gorgeous, lovely brown eyes sparkling in the morning light, he smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And a big thank you to my mom, who let me grab her face so I could get the actions right. She's the real MVP.
> 
> Kinda funny, I used to hate Swaisy. Now I kinda like it.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Reviews would be lovely, as always.


	5. Second Chance

She rushes in, disheveled and exhausted, with Booth by her side, and realizes belatedly that her Jeffersonian ID is still sitting on top of her dresser at home. Thus, Wendell has to come down and swipe his card across the scanner to let them up.

She starts apologizing for her lateness – although realistically, it is perfectly justified and she has no reason to be sorry – in the same second that Cam starts to ask if everything's okay. Their words crash together in a jumbled mess for a few seconds before they both trail off and start again.

"You were later than I thought you'd be, Dr. Brennan. If there's a problem –"

"There is no problem," Brennan replies, slow and deliberate. The way everyone's eyes are falling on the two of them, however, would suggest that nobody believes her. "At least, not a problem in the traditional sense…."

Would this be defined as a problem? She wonders. It would be a blessing if such things exist, of course. A miracle, even. Spontaneous reanimation, while completely wild and unheard of, hardly seems a problem at face value, but the entire mystery of how it came to be still lies unsolved. It's this vicious catch-22 that won't let her enjoy her friend again until it's solved; but perhaps her friends would think differently.

"I feel that the situation would be best explained if I could show you what's happening. So, if… if you could follow me…."

She trails off – another first for a women who so rarely runs out of words to say – and gestures for the five other people on the platform to follow her. Without looking to see if they will, she turns and walks away. Booth and the others, of course, walk close behind.

They follow her through the crowded floor of the Jeffersonian and up a flight of stairs until they reach the balcony that overlooks the entire lab, in all its glory. But it's not the lab that holds the most glory, it seems.

Everyone but Booth and Brennan stiffen in pure shock at what they see. There's a gasp or two, even a whispered, "Oh my God," from Angela.

Nobody blames them.

Because right in front of their eyes, sitting next to Daisy on that familiar orange couch with his son on his lap is none other than Dr. Lance Sweets. The very same Lance Sweets who was so completely, irrevocably _dead_ just five months ago. They solved his _murder_ case. Yet here he is – sitting next to the woman who poured over his bones for days, just feeding his child like nothing happened. Staring at the boy with this expression almost of disbelief, mixed with the most peaceful smile anyone has ever seen.

But at the sound of his friends, he looks up. Soundless as he is, they all hear the breath catch in his throat. They see the nervous expression on his face, and as his shoulder tense almost imperceptibly, Daisy reaches for Seeley and pulls him into her lap. The child starts to cry – whether it's from losing his bottle or being pulled from his father is anyone's guess – but is pacified by the tip of the bottle being placed back in his mouth.

Carefully, Sweets stands.

No one says anything at first; and seeing as he can't, he merely raises one hand and waves it slowly back and forth. He offers them a sober smile.

And for the longest time, they're trapped in this shocked silence.

They're trapped until Angela rounds on Brennan, softly demanding, " _Who_ is he? Why – what's going on?"

"What I've been asking all day," Booth interrupts. "But, uh… it's Sweets."

And she turns and rounds on him, saying, "Sweets _died._ He was _murdered._ We found his killer, we – you looked at his _bones!_ Cam, she –"

"You were dead," the pathologist steps forward, staring, disbelieving. She steps right up to Sweets until they're inches apart, nervous face to nervous face. "You were dead on the slab. I… I stripped the flesh from your bones. I autopsied you."

Her voice breaks on the last word, and he just stares at her with tears in his eyes. He stares until there's a pair of arms wrapped around his neck and a head pressing into his neck, and a second later, Cam pulls away and grabs him by the shoulders.

"But you're alive," she says. "I don't know how, but you're alive."

And he looks out at everyone else, who's staring with a sort of hesitance, as if allowing themselves to hope would be the worst kind of sin. As if even daring to believe what's in front of them were the same thing as losing him all over again.

But that is far, far from the case.

"You're _alive_."

* * *

Seeley Lance Sweets-Wick, even as a newborn, is not like most infants. His family knows that as a fact. He sleeps through the night. Smiles more often than he cries. He laughs at open spaces, as if someone stands just behind his mother every night, making silly faces.

Now it seems that all those silly faces had a single name.

Now, in lieu of those open spaces, he stares at his father and simply smiles happily. As if his tiny life has been made exponentially better, and he's well aware of the fact. Of course, he's right.

That seems to be the best part about it.

That, and sleeping through the night. They're both wonderful, wonderful things about this little boy.

So at eleven at night, he's sleeping soundly. Not a sound but breathing to be heard through the baby monitor on the nightstand.

"It's very unique," Daisy says of it, sitting cross-legged on top of her bed. She has Sweets' full attention, with her hair pulled back into a delicate braid and her smile beaming. "Most infants don't start sleeping through the night until they're about four months old. But Seeley, he's two months old, and he sleeps beautifully."

She pauses, leans forward and presses a gentle kiss to his cheek.

"Just like we will. Because you're alive and we're together again. Like I always knew we would be, Lancelot. I always knew we'd be together, no matter what. So we can sleep together, just like we used to…."

Wrapped around each other, fingers laced together as they breathe in perfect time with one another, so softly they could almost hear their hearts beat. In seamless synchrony. The words hang in the air, unspoken, but felt so strongly that they can almost be heard, if the two listen close enough.

Thankfully, Lance is all ears, and Daisy's a fair listener herself.

And they both need that closeness tonight.

The door stays open, with light filtering into the room from the hallway, and with no hesitation, Daisy turns her lamp off. In that placid, semi-darkness, she climbs under the covers and reaches for her love's hand.

He readily takes it, but makes no move for the covers. Instead, he turns his eyes away. She sits up.

"Lance?" she pulls her hand from his and replaces it on his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

And he turns to her, his nervous, wide eyes glinting softly in the faint light of the room.

"You're afraid."

She could always tell when he was, even on days when it wasn't so obvious. When Booth was hospitalized all those months ago, when he was nearly killed, when he was arrested and imprisoned thereafter, Lance never looked at her with those fearful eyes. Instead, there were only slight indicators: tensing shoulders, the grind of his teeth, the persistent bite on his lower lip. The way he kissed her too quickly and held every embrace just a second longer each time.

Daisy Wick was never a perfect reader of people. But Lance Sweets was the one person she knew better than anyone in the world. He was hers, and she could always read him perfectly.

And right now, he's terrified.

"Why?"

Perhaps she should know better than to ask a question like that when he's so obviously incapable of answering. But adversely – perhaps she doesn't need words. Did she ever?

She receives a deep, suddenly shuddering breath in response. A glance to the pillows. A quick look at the mirror on the nearby wall.

Daisy is, as usual, smart enough to understand.

"Oh. God, I'm so sorry…. Wow, here I've been so… caught up with myself. The whole day, I've just been asking myself over and over if this was all real. Because I was so sure this had to be a dream. I mean, I've dreamed it myself so many times, it must have been. So you can imagine, I doubted it. All day, I did. But I never really…"

She takes a deep breath and looks right into his eyes.

"I never really stopped to think about what you must be feeling. And I'm so sorry about that. I imagine… you're probably feeling the same. Like none of this is real. Like it's all some trick, right?"

Aside from the sudden wetness in his eyes, he is largely reserved as he nods.

"Well, it's not. I know, I know – that's something a trick-person would say, but I swear – it's not a dream. It's all real. You're real, and I'm real, and our son is real. You're alive, and we're all real."

Scooting closer, she moves both of her hands to his face.

"And I won't let you disappear. I'll stay up, Lance. All night, I will. I'll keep you safe."

It is her second chance, after all. She brings her lips to his forehead, lingers for a few precious seconds, and slowly pulls back.

"I promise."

He can only nod, hesitant and careful. And it is truly in spite of himself that he does; he doesn't want to steal her sleep. But fear is a nasty, all-consuming creature. It's eaten away at him to the point where he'll beg – he'll get on his knees and pray – not to vanish. And if Daisy is prepared to promise him safety?

Well, he trusts her. He trusts her with his life, the entirety of it.

So he nods again and slowly climbs under the covers at her prompting.

After a few minutes, he falls asleep with her fingers carding softly through his hair and her voice humming songs in his ears.

* * *

He wakes late in the morning and sits up in his bed when the sun is shining golden light into the room. He runs a hand over his face and turns to the mirror to find that he is the same. The room has not disintegrated, has not slipped away from him in sleep, and he breathes a sigh that catches in his throat.

And in the span of a single moment, he goes from relief to panic and rushes from the room.

Seconds later, he's ducking into the kitchen, still in pajamas, sockless, disheveled. But once again relieved.

Because Daisy's standing in the kitchen, humming softly to herself as she cooks pancakes by the stove. Seeley is giggling away in his high chair, even contentedly babbling at the sight of his father.

And Daisy just turns to him, exhausted and smiling.

"Good morning," she says. And that's all she needs to say for a stupid grin to spread across Lance's face, and for him to rush up and pull her into the tightest hug he's ever given. When he draws back and looks into her eyes, it's as if he's truly passed some ultimate test, and this late, Thursday morning breakfast is his prize.

It's all a prize. Every single thing, it's all this incredible, fantastic reality that he wouldn't trade for the world – not for Heaven or Earth or anything in between.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm essentially just writing myself some new canon, that's basically what this story is to me. I don't know about you all, but I'm pretty sure that this is what actually happened, and the show is some miserable fanfiction.
> 
> Aka I'm still in denial.
> 
> Reviews would be lovely!


	6. Capability

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I finished this story, but will be staggering updates. In other news, I started watching The X-Files. I'm in love omg.
> 
> Enjoy, and as always, reviews are my favorite things.

The call comes about halfway through the day, when the lab is busy and filled with people working. And while no one has spoken about the events of the day before, a sense of surreal disbelief still hangs in the air. Thus their work is distracted, perhaps even sloppy – a strange phenomenon, certainly, for the Jeffersonian's brightest minds.

Perhaps even stranger, however, is that there's a single exception to this.

The outlier, Temperance Brennan alone appears uniquely untouched by everything around her. Such has always been her specialty. Still, it's something unnerving to see.

"I don't understand," Angela says of it, stepping over to her friend and pulling her attention away from the remains on the slab. The rest of the people in the room turn to look at the two. "How could you be so calm about this? Sweets being alive, this goes against everything. Every law of science and every bit of logic and reasoning out there. He's back from the _dead._ Doesn't it bother you just a little bit? Don't you want to know how it happened? _Why_ it happened?"

And the anthropologist stares at her bones for a few long moments, as if the question was never asked. Finally, she looks up.

"Ideally, yes. I am a scientist, Angela, and therefore it is always my intention to figure out how things happen. So… yes, I would like to know why Sweets is back with us. However…"

She pauses, thinks about it for a moment.

"However, I've decided that for now, although this adheres to absolutely none of the basic principles of the world, I don't care. Sweets is alive again, and for the moment, that's enough for me. There is an explanation for everything that happens in the world, this included; and just because I don't understand it now, that is not to say that I never will. So I am… content. For the time being."

"Wow… that's… just not like you, I guess," Angela replies, and she leaves it there.

But Hodgins jumps in, telling his wife, "Come on, Ange. Let's not question a good thing, alright? Sweets is back, and from what Booth said, there's no denying it. We can be actually be happy with something for a change."

She sighs.

"I guess."

And that's when the call comes. In a second, Brennan's gloves are off and she's pulling her phone from her back pocket. She answers calmly to Dr. Carter's voice.

"Dr. Brennan," the physician is saying over the phone, not in a whisper, but in a single, excited breath. "Are you by a television? I have news – but you have to turn on channel seven!"

Brennan nods. "I am not by a television, but I have access to a computer. Just give me a second."

Moments later, a stream of the latest breaking news is playing out on a nearby laptop's screen. And sure enough, it's big. The small group in the lab gathers around to see the headline.

_Missing Navy Seal Found Alive Outside Washington D.C._

The newscasters are going on and on, and with good reason.

"Officer Thomas Bender was declared missing in action in 2009, only to be found alive just miles from his D.C. home early yesterday morning. The officer, while totally blind due to severe damage to his optic nerves, has been declared otherwise healthy, and has been returned home to his family. Meanwhile, the military is reopening the investigation of his disappearance with the hope that he will be able to shed light on what happened so many years ago. In a recent statement, the director of his branch has this to say…."

With a click of the mouse, the stream is cut off and Brennan turns her attention back to Carter, on the other end of the phone.

"A long missing man suddenly found alive the same time as Sweets, without use of his eyes. Do you suppose I'm right in thinking that Bender has been dead all these years?"

"I would agree with you, yes. The chances of finding him alive after all these years were ridiculously small. But finding him alive and unharmed? That's impossible. But here's the other thing: He's not the only other one."

A pause, and as her face twists in confusion, the people around the anthropologist step closer and start straining their ears to hear; they need not, however, because with a press of a button, Brennan puts Carter on speakerphone for all to hear.

"What do you mean he's not the only one?"

* * *

Seeley Booth has always had a talent for focusing on work. In grief, in anger, in hard times without a visible end, it was his vice – an outlet, almost. Rather than spare a single needless thought for his problems, he'd catch killers instead.

It was a win-win, see? He gets to avoid his emotions _and_ make the world a better place. So it's always been the perfect solution.

But when he's not angry? When he's not trying to fight away the hollow ache of loss?

When he's happy, thrilled beyond imagination, he can just work away. The wonderful thoughts running around in his head, he meets them head on, and they seem to set the tone of the day.

And the tone of this oh-so-productive day is pure, concentrated joy, because his best friend is alive again. It makes no sense, but perhaps some things just aren't meant to be sensible. Therefore, he's content with simply enjoying this. And for once, it feels fantastic.

And then the call comes. He answers his phone in a second flat and it's Bones, calling straight from a conversation with Carter. A sudden grain of doubt settling in the back of his mind, he asks if he even wants to hear what news she's shared.

It turns out that he does.

She launches into her recount straight away, explains Thomas Bender's publicized return to D.C. But the real kick, she says? The three other people that the news stations aren't covering.

The miracles-of-the-week, as Brennan lists them off to him, are as follows: Thomas Flynn, US soldier, presumed dead in 2007, found alive and deaf just miles from his Maryland army base; Elizabeth Watrow, an FBI agent who went missing in 2011 and was found by the side of the interstate, paralyzed from the waist down; and Claire Heely, another mute who – unlike the others – was undeniably murdered and buried in 2012.

"And the only way Dr. Carter heard about Heely was through reports circulating through hospital databases. Heely's family is apparently so shocked that they're trying to keep as far away from the media as possible; but they did report it to a hospital in Virginia where she was examined."

Booth rises from his seat at his desk and paces across the room.

"Wow," he says, nearly lost for words. "I…. What do you think we should do… with all of this?"

They fall silent.

* * *

It's a hesitant, unlikely choice that they all make together. After pulling Sweets and Daisy out from their home and back to the lab, they go over the mountain of information now at the forefront of their minds and mull it all over.

And the decision they eventually make is far from an easy one.

Booth transfers his case files to another homicide investigator in the FBI. Cam arranges for the remains to be transported to another nearby facility, and Brennan sends over her primary observations from the case she started on but won't finish.

Because in spite of what she said, Brennan remains a scientist, and this case is vastly more important. At least to her, it is. While wholly content with the situation before, she could never turn down the opportunity to find the truth. No matter what Hodgins warns everyone, his tone dark and careful.

"There's just… there's going to be a catch. I can feel it," he says, eyes cast down. "Whatever we find, what if we don't like it? We could be ruining something great."

But regardless of that, they're set in their choice.

And so they take the case with no bones or flesh or bugs to analyze. There is only Lance Sweets and what information they've already got at their disposal.

But they've solved cases with far less evidence before. And they're more than capable of doing it again.


	7. Voices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, finished the story but totally forgot to post it here haha - four chapters coming up in the next few minutes!

Claire Heely's medical records proved difficult – and vaguely illegal – to track down, but they managed. Angela's the single best computer whiz anyone knows, and she had them downloaded within the hour. And while she's sure retrieving those files violated every code of ethics imaginable, she allows herself to believe that the ends, in this case, justify the means. And it's not as if they're up to anything malicious. They'll use what they need, and as soon as they're done, those records will be gone from her computer without a trace.

But for now, they're necessary. With no bones or physical remains to analyze, Brennan and Daisy – and Wendell, because while the case he was assigned was cancelled, he's still curious as all hell and perfectly on board to help – are left to analyze mere pictures of the woman's skeleton post-mortem and notes from the murder investigation. It's not much, but it is a fair start.

Or, rather, a bit more than a fair start, as it turns out.

After pouring over those pictures for God knows how long, that file suddenly turns into a key piece of evidence as Daisy straightens up and announces that she's seen all of Heely's injuries before. Down to the last hairline fracture, she's seen it. She looks over to her mentor and gives the older woman a firm nod of the head – and Brennan is, as always, quick to understand.

It takes some explaining to Wendell, however, who look at the two of them and knits his eyebrows in confusion and asks, "What do you mean? Where?"

Brennan pulls up a very different – yet strikingly similar – file and sets them side by side. Sure enough, the damaged skeletons seem to have shared the same fate. But in more ways than one.

"Claire Heely had the same injuries as Sweets."

* * *

They pull up what public records have of Heely next, hell bent on discovering why her skeleton looked so much like Sweets' did. At first, it's strange.

"Claire Heely wasn't a police officer," Angela says, frowning her way through pages and pages of digital newspaper articles and drivers licenses and family documents and legal records. "She wasn't a soldier or a Navy Seal or an FBI agent like everyone else who came back. So how..."

The screen pauses on one headline, and then they see it.

_Arlington Woman Killed Weeks before Wedding, Family and Fiancé Grieve_

And below it, a picture. A black and white print of a happy couple smiling at the camera, hand in hand – Heely in all of her blonde, smiling, living glory, and a man that everybody instantly recognizes, much to their unpleasant shock. There's the tiniest caption underneath the photo, once that reads:

_Heely and Fiancé Kenneth Emory Photographed on Christmas, 2011_

"Kenneth Emory," Brennan notes, giving a firm nod to the people around her before staring back at the screen. "The same Kenneth Emory who killed Sweets."

And she knows enough about the world by this point to know that there are no coincidences like this.

* * *

"Wait a second, wait a second – you're telling me he just –"

"He's back, Aubrey," Booth says, firm and resolute. The younger man in front of him merely stares with owlish, surprised eyes. "Sweets is back."

"That doesn't… it doesn't make any sense!" Aubrey answers, and he's absolutely right. He saw the man die, for god's sake; he found him bleeding out and struggling for breath on the pavement and stuck around until it was all over. No one comes back from that. No one.

Except, perhaps, Lance Sweets. And the four other people Booth starts telling him about, the people they are now to investigate. They're investigating dead people. Or people who, by all accounts, _should_ be dead.

God, this is insane. He can't say he's disappointed to hear the shrink's back – don't think he'd forget so easily how Sweets stuck up for him in the middle of all that chaos – but the fact remains. This is _insane._

But here he is, being told by his superior that they're working an entirely new case than what they started on. And though he's suddenly shaken by what this all could reveal, he decides he'd be a fool to turn this down.

So he and Booth set to work.

* * *

James Aubrey knows three things and three things alone about Kenneth Emory. The first is that he went to Quantico and graduated in 2005, when Aubrey himself was a freshman. The second – and all he can really base this on is word of mouth, but it's a perfectly reasonable idea – is that he enlisted in the Marines the second after setting foot off campus for the last time. Promoted to Lieutenant, he was shipped right off to Afghanistan for his first tour.

The third? The man was a killer. Before he died, he killed at least one – or two, rather, if what Dr. Brennan's now insisting is true - person in cold blood, off the battle field.

Look, the man was something of a legend back in school. The topic of countless discussions in and out of the classroom; everyone always knew he'd become something great.

If only anyone knew how drastically he'd let them all down.

Regardless, the man is now their only lead. He's the only thing linking Sweets and Heely, so what must that say about the others?

Therefore, they use Emory as a lens of sorts. Read over the dead man's file and compare it to the others.

What they find is astounding – if not entirely surprising.

Lawrence Flynn's unit was deployed to the Middle East the very same year, month, week as Emory's. And as fate would have it – they were assigned to the same base, with similar missions.

They don't find much about the context surrounding it, but regardless, Booth doesn't think it's a coincidence that Flynn and Emory were given a partnered assignment one night in the middle of August, 2007. He thinks it less of a coincidence that only one man returned to camp from the alleged shootout by the edge of a small Afghan village.

But no one ever found Flynn's body – so they suppose they can't be sure.

They've got a fairly good idea, though.

* * *

Now Elizabeth Watrow – she's a familiar name. Booth remembers well the chaos that erupted in the FBI when one of their senior agents went missing almost overnight. Work for the next few months thereafter was just this whirl of APBs and constant workplace questioning.

He didn't realize it then, but looking back on it now – perhaps he should have taken a lesson from her.

Imagine his surprise when her file turned up after a few minutes of searching, and it was opened to reveal her final notes on her last case. Scribbled, handwritten notes covered the margins of paperwork that was scanned into the system, and what he reads, he finds, is eerily similar to notes he himself wrote so many months ago.

_FBI payoffs, possibly running through ranks? Murders, cases incorrectly investigated, written off. Follow trail – talk to Sanderson? Find source._

Of course Booth's team wasn't the first to notice the conspiracy poisoning the FBI – of _course_. Perhaps it was foolish to think so. They were the last ones to involve themselves, for sure. It seems they were far from the first.

Elizabeth Watrow was the first. Upon further digging, Booth finds pages upon pages of conspiracy notes dating back to the middle of 2010, and the depth and breadth of them are all so astounding.

But nowhere in her file did she indicate where she was headed on some rainy evening in May of 2011, but what fate befell her, Booth and Aubrey are suddenly sure, must have been the very same fate as their own Lance Sweets. Lawrence Flynn, Claire Heely. If they could see the woman's skeleton laid out before them, they're positive it would bear the same damage.

Pieces start falling together. And soon they're only missing one.

* * *

Thomas Bender, ex-Navy Seal, is the only one whose records are difficult to find. Or, rather – not difficult. They're _impossible_ to find. Perhaps that's what comes with the job. Zero transparency, complete opacity. Not that it particularly matters for the man who's no doubt trying very hard to escape all of the publicity being thrown at him at once.

Because the press isn't hounding him and his family because he was a Seal. They're hounding because he's alive and home after so long. The excitement is through the roof, of course, but if they knew the extent of it?

Now that would be something. The biggest news day imaginable.

It takes Booth a while, but he eventually tracks down the man's address. And then without giving it a second thought – because Bender's the last piece, the confirmation to this strange link between everything – he climbs into his SUV and picks Sweets up for the ride.

And as the shrink silently takes his spot in the passenger seat, it's as if nothing changed. Well, perhaps one thing – Sweets never shut up before. The guy was always talking, a mile a minute, a stark contrast to now. But his kind, curious eyes and undoubted presence remain, sure as anything.

Booth smiles to himself the whole ride out, glancing every so often to his right to see the still-young psychologist staring out the window in absolute wonder.

* * *

When they finally get to the house, they're almost turned away. A young woman with chestnut hair and nervous eyes practically starts shooing them out the second she sees them, insisting that they've had enough reporters here for once lifetime. They've had enough reporters and investigators and well-wishers, and the only thing she and her husband want right now is privacy.

"I'm sorry," she repeats. "But if you could please go…"

But suddenly there's a voice behind her. A deep, curious voice asking who's at the door, and the woman turns her head slightly to answer. Two FBI guys, and they were just leaving.

Strangely enough – the voice tells her to let them in. Just for a couple minutes. Hesitantly, she agrees, and Booth and Sweets step inside.

They see Thomas Bender in person for the first time, sitting on the living room sofa and waiting to be introduced. Booth steps up as he always would, even if Sweets had the voice to talk.

"Good afternoon, sir. I'm Special Agent Seeley Booth, and I'm very sorry to bother you. I'm sure you're all going through a lot right now, but I just have to ask you a couple questions."

A strange expression sits on the blind man's face, and he just nods and allows it.

"Ask away. I'll try my best."

A pause.

Booth takes a deep breath and prepares to hear his own strange words before finally speaking.

"I need to know how you died."

And Bender's wife rounds on him immediately, her nervous features changing before their eyes.

"What kind of question is that?" she asks angrily, walking right up to him. "Just awful – he's sitting right here, alive. The military is investigating his disappearance, so that's really none of your –"

Bender's soft voice interrupts his wife's once again, and all it takes is her name to do it.

"Natalie. It's a fine question."

And silence spreads over them for good long minute before the former Seal finds his voice again and continues, "I don't really think I'm allowed to talk about it."

"Fine," Booth allows, nodding his head in agreement, although the other man can't see it. "Just… okay, just tell me one thing. Was a man named Kenneth Emory involved?"

A beat.

After nodding, swallowing thickly, Bender answers quietly, almost to himself. Near mournfully, he says, "Yeah. Kenney. But he's dead now. Right?"

Looking at him carefully, confused, Booth tells him so. The man's dead. He's been dead for months.

"Good," Bender replies, and it earns him a concerned look from his wife that he certainly doesn't notice. But suddenly, the man's expression changes and he asks, "There's another man with you, right? Natalie said there were two."

There's another pause before Booth nods and answers, "Yeah. He lost his voice temporarily – but this is my partner… Lance Sweets."

"Lance Sweets?" the Seal asks, and he's up from his seat in a second. "Hang on. Hang on, I know that name."

And in a strange turn of events, both Sweets and Bender take a hesitant step towards each other. Bender shoves a gentle hand over Sweets' face.

He continues, "I know your face, too. I know you. You were there."

Sweets doesn't seem to question it – in fact, something in his face seems to suggest he actually understands what he's saying – but the suddenly excited tone in Bender's voice has Booth instantly on edge –

"He was _where?"_

Obviously not overseas, obviously not where Bender was killed. In 2009, Lance Sweets was still a baby-faced shrink writing some stupid book about some FBI partnership; Booth can attest to that. Still, Bender pays Booth no mind as he goes on, "You were there. The _voices_ – you had to have heard the voices, too!"

"What voices?" Booth asks, and he and Natalie share a confused, concerned look. In an instant, Bender doesn't seem to be talking about when he died.

He's talking about when he came back.

"I know you must have heard them," the Seal goes on as if Booth never spoke. "I _know_. What did they say to you?"

"He can't speak."

So, sense entirely lacking, Bender's wife finds a pad of paper and a pen. Hesitantly, Sweets takes it and writes. As soon as he's done, he hands it off to Booth, who reads it aloud in a shaking voice.

" _They said it was time to go home."_


	8. Of Universes

"So all five people who came back were killed by Kenneth Emory," Daisy repeats, rubbing a tired eye with the back of her hand. "Still, that doesn't explain how they came back to life. Or why. Plus, Emory was in the military, he had to have killed more than five people in his career. So what about them? Why aren't they back?"

She says all of this to everyone, after they've all gathered back in the lab. They've exhausted every bit of science and FBI work they could apply to this case, and it seems they can go no further.

Because the Jeffersonian team has only ever dealt with things that make sense in the physical world. They've only ever dealt with death. Never second chances at life.

But an all-star group like them is bound to have contacts. Luckily, they can think of one.

"I think I might know who to call on this one," Angela says with a smile and the firm hope that this could work.

* * *

Avalon Harmonia drives up the next day, and the first thing she does is demand Emory's file in as full detail as they can produce.

And what they have on the guy is truly extensive.

So she runs through it, reading as the group of people around her practically hold their breath waiting for her conclusion. After roughly ten minutes of reading and going back and forth with questions, she notes something in the file.

"You were focusing almost solely on his involvement in the deaths of all of those people, right? But you didn't look _specifically_ at Emory. If you look right here – 2006. Halfway through his second tour in Afghanistan, he was shot through the chest three times by an enemy sniper. According to notes from the doctors that worked on him, by all accounts, he shouldn't have lived through it. But he did. Not only that, but he recovered quickly enough to continue his work. A medical anomaly, they all called it. A miracle."

She points it out, and there it is. But that alone explains nothing.

"Come here," she adds, gesturing to Sweets. Confused, he simply obeys and tries not to look so surprised when she grabs him gently by the jaw. She pushes her thumb into his soft cheek, looks right into his eyes and smiles. "There _is_ new life in you…."

A stretch of hopeful silence falls on them, and only stops when Avalon breaks from her thoughtful reverie to continue her explanation, slowly taking her hand away from Sweets's face.

She surmises, "The only thing I can think of to explain it is that Kenneth Emory's death is what brought them all back. Emory was a man living on borrowed time. He was meant to die in 2006, but by some cosmic error, he did not. And it seems that the five murders he committed thereafter, excepting those he killed as a soldier, were essentially byproducts of that error. The people he killed at war would no doubt have been killed by some other soldier if not for him, but _these_ five… they're back and walking around again because the universe is correcting its mistake."

"That's impossible…" Brennan starts, shaking her head. "The universe… it doesn't make mistakes."

She proclaims it as fact, because the universe has been the one constant thing throughout all of time. It can't be anything but fact because the universe just _is._ But Avalon seems to see it differently.

"Normally I'd agree with you," the psychic says. "But not in this case. Typically, the universe is… omnipotent. Infinite, all-powerful, and in constant harmony with fate. I've often said that there is no such thing as being in the wrong place at the wrong time; because wherever you are in the world, whatever you're doing, you never step off of your intended path. You are always where the universe wants you to be. Your fate is meant to be set."

She pauses and turns back to look at Sweets.

"However, the universe, like all things, is imperfect. Like we all are. Like human beings, the universe is bound to make a mistake at some point in its truly finite existence. But it has the power to correct itself and set things right. Lance Sweets, you're alive again. You were always meant to be right here, and the universe has made sure that you are."

She smiles.

"Enjoy your life."

* * *

It takes something truly big to gather the entire team for dinner on a Thursday night. A holiday. A wedding. A baby. A funeral. Something like that.

And a friend coming back from the dead certainly qualifies as _big._ Means for celebration.

So that's what they do: They celebrate.

They all gather at Booth and Brennan's house at five o'clock, when the sun is just setting and the food is just about ready. And it's a full family affair, with everyone from the entire team to the interns to Max to Michael Vincent to Seeley Lance crammed into the house. All but one, though – and she won't be long.

The one person who has yet to show her face by five thirty, as Brennan explained with a beaming smile, has been down for a nap. And as soon as final alarm on the oven goes off, announcing to everyone that dinner is ready, Booth heads up the stairs to retrieve her.

No one moves into the kitchen just yet; instead, they wait in the living room, in full view of the foot of the stairs and just listen to Booth telling his daughter, "Hey, dinner's ready, hun. And we've got a big surprise for you downstairs – do you want to see what it is?"

There's a muffled echo of excitement and the uneven patter of tiny feet on the landing upstairs. The toddler bounds down the stairs as quickly as her short legs can carry her, and when she reaches the bottom, there's a pause. And then there's not.

" _Uncle Sweets!"_

Christine moves faster than bullet for the psychologist who's grinning like nothing else, and Sweets is quick to bend down and pull the girl up and into his arms. She latches on to his neck – with a grip that _must_ surpass the strength of an average four year old – and shoves her face against his cheek, and he can feel her smile against his skin. Her words are muffled until she pulls her head up again.

"I missed you, I missed you, I missed you!"

"He missed you, too, sweetheart," Daisy supplies, walking over to where they stand. And at the sight of Daisy and the small child in her arms, Christine squeaks out a small, _"Oh!"_ and wriggles out from Sweets' grasp.

She heads right for her Aunt Daisy and waits patiently for her to squat down to her height. And as soon as Seeley Lance is at eye-level, she leans forward and presses a gentle kiss to his tiny forehead.

"See, Seeley?" she whisper-shouts to the sleeping infant. "I told you your daddy would be back! I told you!"

Daisy smiles over her shoulder.

"She did!"

* * *

There is no shortage of smiles or laughter or happiness that night, and that dinner is inarguably the best night of their lives thus far. And to all the world, it's just some random Thursday evening.

Drinks come out as soon as dinner ends, and the celebration moves into the living room, where there's no shortage of conversation topics, either. They catch Sweets up on everything he's missed in the world over the past five months – the Ferguson riots, the president's amnesty move, the Fifty Shades of Grey movie ("Abusive relationship written all over it – you don't really want to know."), the recent measles outbreak – and they tell him everything about _them_ that he's missed. He listens with straining ears about how excellent Michael Vincent's been doing in the first grade, about how Wendell's kicked his cancer, about how they've picked a kindergarten program for Christine.

It's all music to the psychologist's ears.

And he enjoys it until a phone call comes for Booth, interrupting the happy flow of the room. There's a long pause as the agent answers and talks, smiles, and thanks the person on the other end before hanging up.

He shoves his phone in his pocket and explains, "It was Carter. She said Bender got his sight back. She's not sure about the others, but she thinks they're probably getting their senses back, too."

"Hey, try to talk, Sweets!" Hodgins says. "See if your voice is back yet."

With a nervous nod, Sweets clears his throat – and smiles wide at the sound that makes.

Everyone waits with anticipation as he looks out at them and takes a deep breath – but before he can say a word, something catches his eye from across the room.

And suddenly he can't speak. He can only stare in pure, abrupt horror at the muted television screen across the room.


	9. Some Sunny Day

" _What do you mean they canceled The Colbert Report?!"_

No sooner does he say that than Booth softly swats a hand across the back of Sweets' head, and the rest of the room starts laughing like nothing else.

"Are you kidding?" Booth says with an incredulous expression on his face. "I thought something was wrong!"

"Yeah, this is terrible! How could they cancel it? Why didn't anyone tell me _this?"_

He just keeps staring at the headline at the bottom of the screen that says that Larry Wilmore will be taking over the timeslot, and Angela doesn't stop laughing as she answers, "They didn't cancel it, Sweets. It ended! Stephen Colbert is going to host the Late Show. But God, _that's_ the first thing you say?"

"Sorry! Sorry. Oh my god," Sweets replies, bringing both hands up to run through his hair. "Just – oh my god, that was my favorite. And I didn't even get to see the end of it! Aw, jeez!"

With an amused smile on her face, Brennan reaches for a nearby remote and unmutes the television, saying, "Sweets, you know I can pull it up. Do you want to see the last episode? Personally, I thought the finale was an excellent sendoff."

And Sweets doesn't hesitate when he answers, "Yes! Thank you!"

And on it goes. The familiar newsroom comes onto the screen, with Colbert sitting on top of the desk, welcoming the mortal nation, thanking the audience for spending some of their rapidly dwindling time on Earth with him. ("Wait, what?" "Just keep watching!")

" _I've either been sitting here for two minutes or for two hundred years. I can't tell the difference anymore because I'm deathless."_

"Same!" Sweets says, nearly deadpan, and it earns a wild laugh from Daisy, and the room follows. They laugh at the irony until piano music starts blaring from the speakers and the man on the screen looks into the camera and suddenly starts to sing.

" _I guess what I'm trying to say is… We'll meet again. Don't know where – don't know when! But I know we'll meet again some sunny day!"_

Sweets' jaw drops – "Oh my god! Is that –"

So it is. Jon Stewart pops onto the screen and joins the host, and in the blink of an eye, a whole audience full of celebrities is singing along. Without a second thought, everyone in Booth and Brennan's living room joins in, too.

In that one moment, they truly are one giant family. And they all sing together, with even Christine and Michael humming along as best as they can –

" _Keep smiling through, just like you always do! Till the blue skies drive the dark clouds, far away! So will you please say hello to the folks that I know – tell them I won't be long!"_

Sweets throws a soft arm around Daisy's shoulder and presses a kiss to her neck.

"I wasn't long," he whispers in her ear, and the room around them just continues to sing, this mass of smiles and laughter and beautifully loud, off-key notes.

" _They'll be happy to know that as you saw me go, I was singing this song! We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when – but I know we'll meet again some sunny day!"_

* * *

Two days pass and Lance Sweets stands before a judge in his best suit. Standing there, very much alive and well, he'd wager that it's about time his death status be rescinded. The judge is inclined to agree. Still, there's a question begging to be answered.

"Well, Dr. Sweets, I'm more than happy to reverse the ruling. However," the man says, eyeing the man intently. "I must ask you where you've been the past five months."

And Sweets nods.

"Of course, Your Honor. About this time in September, my colleagues and I were involved in a particularly dangerous case. I had gone to retrieve a set of documents that were important to solving it, but I was… intercepted on my way out."

He pauses. God, he hates lying – but he reminds himself that it's necessary. Completely illegal, but wholly necessary. If he told a judge what _really_ happened – well, he'd be thrown in a mental institution. Forget about jail.

"It is difficult to remember the past five months, but from what I've been told, I was essentially taken from my location by the men we'd been trying to arrest. According to the people who got me out, I'd been held in an unknown location and was only released when my captors decided it would be in their best interest to flee."

"What do you mean by that? You don't remember, Dr. Sweets?"

"Not all of it, sir," he answers, and he rubs the back of his head for good measure. "I sustained a sizeable head injury a few days before I was found. I've been having some memory trouble."

And the judge nods.

"And what of the body that was cremated? Seeing as it wasn't Dr. Sweets, who was it?"

"That was an unfortunate error on the part of the lab, Your Honor," Cam speaks up. "The remains were entirely misidentified, which led to Dr. Sweets being pronounced dead in the first place. We've since notified the real deceased's family and made the necessary corrections. Thankfully, the other victim's case was solved entirely by simple police work."

The judge sighs, "Very well, Dr. Saroyan. Dr. Sweets, you can consider yourself legally alive once more. You can come fill out the necessary paperwork any time in the next few days."

He slams his gavel down twice, effectively ending the case.

"Enjoy your life."

* * *

It's a much quieter celebration this time, sans music. A simple dinner with just Booth's family and Sweets', at the latter's home.

They eat and chat as if this is just some normal day – and it nearly is. They can feel normalcy returning to them slowly, and they wonder in the back of their minds when it will return in full. Surely, the day will come when they will all simply wake up and go about their lives as if nothing ever happened. As if Sweets never died, and this was all just some elaborate, distant dream.

They consider it a promise.

Once dinner is over and the table is cleared, Sweets takes his son from Daisy's arms and starts gently rocking the little boy to sleep. Meanwhile, Christine starts leading Brennan and Daisy upstairs, delighted at the prospect of a full-house tour. She never did see the entire house, not yet.

And suddenly, once the baby boy in the psychologist's arms falls asleep, Sweets and Booth are alone in the room.

Almost hesitantly, Booth finds his voice to speak.

"Hey, Sweets," the agent says, pulling Sweets' attention right to him.

"Yeah?"

"I just…." Booth pauses, takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry, you know, if this is out of nowhere. But, uh… you know after you died… I just – I thought a lot about you. You know."

He waits a few seconds before going on.

"There was a lot of stuff running through my mind, and I just… I decided that if I ever got the chance, I'd make sure that… you knew…"

Sweets just looks at him, all knitted eyebrows and a confused expression, his silent question poised in the air.

"That you knew how much we all care about you. You know? We love you. And I just…. This is me letting you know."

And with a solid nod, he cups Sweets' shoulder in his hand and gives the man as firm a shake as he can give without waking the child in his arms. Sweets simply casts his eyes down and smiles at the floor.

"You don't need to tell me that, Booth. You know I already knew that."

At that, Booth lets out a contented sigh and replies, "Okay. Good. I just had to make sure."

"No problem!"

"And one more thing," Booth continues, taking another pause. "I know this is probably the weirdest question to ask, but… I'm curious. If it's not too much to ask… what's dying like?"

"What's dying like?" Sweets echoes, slight surprise clear on his face. He considers the question for a few long moments. "Well… it's like… you know when you're boarding a plane?"

Booth nods.

"It's like you're boarding a plane. And you know the – that tunnel, almost, with the white walls and the loud noise, and you can't tell which way's up and which way's down. The jet bridge. It's kind of like that. And you're walking through that tunnel, and you're not sure where the plane's going to take you; you just know you have to get on, so you do."

Booth hears this and nods. "And… coming back?"

Sweets smiles wide.

"Coming back. Well, if dying was like getting on a departing plane, then coming back was the opposite. It's almost like getting off a plane that's just landed. You've got the same tunnel, except you're walking the other way. And instead of the noise, it's just these voices in your head telling you that you're going home. And that's really what's happening, see. It's like coming home from a trip, and that trip was… beautiful. And wonderful and incredible, and you wouldn't trade a single second of it. But still…"

He takes a deep breath.

"You're so incredibly happy. Because no matter how wonderful your trip was… there's no place you'd rather be than home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The episode of The Colbert Report referenced is called "Grimmy," and it aired on December 18th, 2014, and it is the most perfect thing in the world. The song they covered is called, "We'll Meet Again," by Vera Lynn.
> 
> So that whole little scene was kind of stupid, but I went with it haha. I peg Sweets for the kind of guy who would love The Colbert Report, honestly.


	10. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An epilogue for what turned into a true clusterfuck of a story! :) Hope you all enjoyed, thanks for reading!

March 24, 2027

They've been trying to keep the noise down, but for a group of sixteen year olds, the task proves to be a rather difficult one. No matter how hard they try, even the calmest of sleepover activities always end in spontaneous fits of laughter – and a pillow thrown at someone's face, in an effort to just shut them up.

This time it's Sara on the receiving end of that one.

"Shush!" Christine whisper-shouts, her own body shaking with silent laughter. The site of her best friend looking so terribly indignant with her messed up hair and the pillow in her lap nearly makes her laugh even more – but she restrains herself. "My mom already came down twice, do you want them to send you guys home?"

"Come on, they won't do that!" the indignant look falls right off of Sara's face, replaced immediately with a knowing grin.

"Yeah, Christine," another girl across the room adds, hopping over to them in her sleeping bag. "Your parents are honestly so chill. They won't kick us out for a little noise."

And the birthday girl sighs, allowing herself a smile.

"Fine," she says. "I mean, they can't kick _me_ out – so it's not really my problem, right?"

"Exactly!" a fourth girl, Dana, throws in with a giggle before changing the subject. "Wait, so did you take your permit test yet?"

"Calm down, I've only been sixteen for less than a day! But not yet. Dad didn't realize we needed an appointment to take the exam, so we went in this afternoon, but they're making me go back tomorrow to take it. It's kind of stupid."

"Okay, gotcha," Sara says, and in a second, another smile spreads across her face. "Any talk about getting you a car yet?"

At that, Christine lets out a pretty loud laugh herself.

"A car, funny – my parents are still arguing about who's going to teach me to drive. They haven't even _thought_ about a car, yet."

"Wait, what do you mean?"

Christine smiles. "I mean that my dad thinks he should teach me because he's the self-proclaimed better driver, and my mom thinks she should teach me because she's calmer. Plus, she also thinks she's the better driver, so… you see where the problem is."

This earns a few laughs around the room, and there's a stretch of awkward silence before Dana finally breaks it.

"Okay, can we do something? I'm bored now."

"As long as we don't wake everyone up, then of _course!"_ Christine adds, back to her original goal of keeping the room as quiet as possible. In response, however, her friends let out a collective groan.

"No fun, Christine," Sara tells her with a smile and a wink, and a beat goes by without any words.

"Truth or dare?"

Christine blinks. "Wait, who is that directed to? Or are you asking the group?"

"It's directed towards you, birthday girl!" Sara replies. "Truth or dare?"

"Fine. Dare!"

There's a soft laugh from Sara as she whisper-shouts across the room, "Laurel, what should she do?"

"Um…" the other girl bites down on her bottom lip, thinking hard. "Freeze her bra? And wear it for thirty seconds?"

Christine laughs at that, but Sara is clearly not satisfied.

"No, that's stupid. Uh… take your dad's car around the block without waking anyone up?"

"Sara, I don't think you're ever going to grasp the fact that my dad is, in fact, in the FBI. Pretty sure he could ground me _and_ charge me with a felony at the same time. Plus, I don't think having the girl who has literally never operated a vehicle before drive one in the middle of the night is the best idea."

"So do you decline?" Sara asks. "Do you lose on the first dare?"

"No!" Christine laughs. "You're just awful at choosing dares. It's your fault. Can I switch to truth?"

"Fine, fine. Anyone got a question?"

They all think, and Dana is the first one to ask.

"I don't know if it's a dumb question or not, but what's the weirdest dream you've ever had?"

"Dana's so much better at this game than you are," Christine says to Sara, and she thinks about her answer. "Uh… hang on… okay!"

She takes a second to tie her hair up and answers.

"I don't even know why I remember this, but I do. When I was like… I don't know, maybe about four, I had this weird dream that my Uncle Lance died. I dreamed that he died, and like, a couple months later he just reappeared randomly. Everyone went around talking about some _cosmic error_ with the universe or some shit like that. It was all in the news and everything. I don't know, it was weird. But he just came back from the dead, and went on like nothing ever happened."

"That actually sounds pretty cool," someone says of it, and continues on, "Really weird for a four year old, but still kind of cool. Your Uncle Lance is the one with the dark hair, right? Seeley's dad?"

Christine nods. "Yeah, that's him. I mean, he obviously never died, so… oh! Another weird dream. I dreamed once that Seeley was in my calc class for some reason – and he did better than everyone, too. Dream-me was pretty pissed off about it. I think that one ties for weirdest dream."

Sara laughs. "But Seeley's, like, twelve!"

"I know! But he's already in high school Algebra! Is a jump to Calculus really that dramatic?"

"Yes!" Laurel answers. "Don't worry, Booth, you've still got that valedictorian spot in the bag. Even if you just stopped doing schoolwork altogether, I'm sure the lowest place you'd end up is salutatorian."

"Ha-ha. Thanks," the girl replies with a sarcastic tone, but a warm smile before turning back to Sara.

"Truth or dare?"

"Me?"

"Of course, you. _Sara,_ truth or dare?"

The girl sighs and goes with _dare._ Christine grins, just the slightest hint of mischief in her eyes.

"Go freeze your bra. Wear it for forty five seconds."

"Come on, that's –"

"I don't care if it's stupid," Christine says. "That's the dare. Forty five seconds with a frozen bra, take it or leave it."

Sara sighs.

And they all file up the stairs quietly, taking care not to wake anyone on their walk to the freezer.


End file.
